How can my team make the N.F.L. playoffs? It’s a simple question, but answering it can be devilishly complicated. At this point in the season, when teams have six or seven games remaining, the playoff picture is delightfully foggy.

For a normal fan — particularly one for whom sports are a blissful escape from, say, the tumultuous world of American electoral politics — it’s surprisingly difficult to figure out. And, more often than not, the television commentators don’t make things any easier.

It’s always bothered us, too, so we built an interactive tool to help us understand.

Our N.F.L. Playoff Simulator — now entering its third year of existence — is built for one purpose: to help you explore the paths to the playoffs for every team in the N.F.L. It works like this: We let you choose the outcomes of any game you select and simulate every other game remaining in the 2016 season. (In its first rendition, we considered each game a coin flip; since then, we’ve used Sagarin ratings, which reflect the fact that, even though anything can happen on a given Sunday, not all teams are created equal.)

What makes this tool more useful than other online calculators, like the ones at ESPN, Yahoo or NFL.com, is that we do the work for you: There’s no need to pick the outcomes of every game left in the season. Pick any outcomes — or none at all — and our tool will simulate the rest of the season for you, instantly identifying the most important games remaining for each team and turning you into a playoff scenarios expert.

Our simulator also lets you explore specific and unrealistic paths, like one in which the Vikings finish the season with the N.F.C.’s best record, a bye week and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs (roughly a 2-in-100 shot, but go for it).

Finally, we’ve added a feature this year, for fans of teams like the 0-10 Cleveland Browns, whose season is effectively over. We now let you use the simulator backward — to see how the Browns could have their best shot at a No. 1 pick in the 2017 N.F.L. draft. As the season comes to an end, figuring out who will finish last can get just as complicated as figuring out who will finish first. If you’re going to root against your own team, you might as well do it as intelligently as possible.